1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to image processing of image data and, more specifically, to image processing methods that allow the generation of vessel models in arbitrary volumetric data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Three-dimensional (3D) structures from computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) scans are often used by doctors as non-invasive methods for imaging certain parts of the body such as, for example, the heart and the vessels that are contained in the heart. For example, when examining a patient's cardiac health, doctors often rely on these scans to determine if there are vessels that indicate whether the patient needs further medical attention. When using these medical images to measure a patient's cardiac health, quantitative information regarding the heart and its vessels may be extracted through identification and computation of various contiguous regions of the heart. It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that doctors relying on these scans may study other body parts of interest and the vessels contained therein in evaluating a patient's health. The identification of these regions may be referred to as segmentation and, more specifically, vessel segmentation and vessel model generation.
Current technologies that are used for vessel segmentation and identification may require that some image processing be performed on the arbitrary volumetric data before segmenting portions of the image to determine vessels. These tools may be time-consuming and less dynamic. While other existing tools also allow users to add a sequence of points that are used to identify vessels from an image data, these existing tools require an input sequence that cannot be easily edited.
Accordingly, there is a need for dynamic methods that allow a user to interactively generate vessel models from medical imaging data and are efficient, fast and less rigid. There is a need for methods that allow modification of a sequence by a user and other options which allow a user to specify or choose options in modifying portions of a vessel when using the tool to segment the vessels.